I've had my Empeg and it's original tuner installed in my '67 Mustang for probably 4 years now and it's been working fine the whole time. Yesterday however my FM reception started dropping out on the way to work and it doesn't look like it's planning on getting any better on it's own.

When I first turn the car on the FM reception is fine. After a while (15-20 minutes yesterday morning, 5 minutes this afternoon, 1 minute now I've been playing with it today) the FM signal starts cutting in and out. The stereo icon disappears, the RDS info stops scrolling and the sound stops. The reception bars remain at full strength and the red light on the tuner stays lit. Then the sound will just pop back in. Usually with a slight pop like you're putting a needle on a record. There seems to be no set amount of time that it spends on or off, it sometimes stays in whatever state it's in for 10-20 seconds, sometimes it flickers on and off rapidly.

The AM reception and the MP3 playing functions work fine during all of this. When an FM station is cutting out I can switch to an AM station or an MP3 and the tuner resumes it's normal operation. Until I switch back of course.

I've pulled the tuner from the dash and tried reseating the cables. I've also jostled the cables on the back of the sled. Nothing I do with the cables makes any difference to the sound output. Shaking the tuner while it's hanging under the dash and turning it every which way doesn't make it work any better either.

I opened up the tuner case, but I don't see anything obviously wrong. I searched the forums and found a couple references to possible op-amp problems with the original tuners, but I didn't find anything about actually fixing them.

Does anyone know what might be causing my tuner to drop out and how to go about fixing it? Or am I going to have to break down and head over to the For Sale forum and pick up a new PCATS tuner?

thanks